CQ Communications, Inc.

Friday, May 4, 2018

Bet You Haven't Done This: WA1ZMS Has Made Contacts on 30 US Ham Bands

In fact, we'll bet you didn't even know we had 30 different bands available to us!The ARRL Letter reports that Brian
Justin, WA1ZMS, of Forest, Virginia, made a 2200-meter contact in April with
K3MF in Pennsylvania to have at least one two-way contact on each amateur band
from 137 kHz to 322 GHz. Brian informs us that he has since added a contact on 403 GHz!

WA1ZMS's upper microwave transceiver. A pair of theseradios (which he built) was used to make record-settingcontacts on 241, 322 and 403 GHz! (WA1ZMS photo)

For some of the higher microwave bands, he needed
to build two radios and give one to a friend to take to a different location to
set up a contact. He used the North East Weak Signal (NEWS) Group standard of
one-kilometer minimum separation to be counted as a valid contact. Justin began
the effort in 2002 and made confirmed contacts on all bands from 160 meters to
300 GHz within a year. The addition of our two newest bands – 630 and 2200
meters – as well as realignment of some microwave bands, required additional
contacts over the years, setting several world DX records in the process, as
well as making the first-ever amateur contact on less-than-one-millimeter bands,
322 GHz and 403 GHz.

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Published monthly since 1945, CQ is today the world's leading independent amateur radio magazine, now available in both print and digital editions. We focus on interesting people and practical projects, plus we sponsor a wide array of contests and award programs. These include the very challenging Worked All Zones (WAZ) and USA-Counties (USA-CA) awards and the world's most popular ham radio contests, the CQ World Wide DX Contest and the CQ WPX Contest. Subscriptions are available online through our website, www.cq-amateur-radio.com.